When Staten Island Academy played the Convent of the Sacred Heart during the regular season, the Tigers recorded an easy 16-0 victory.

When the two teams met on Wednesday in the AAIS girls’ lacrosse semifinals, things were a little different as the Cardinals held a 4-3 advantage midway through the first half at Randall’s Island.

“I think we started off slow. This sounds weird, but I’m happy we did. I think it was good that we faced some adversity in this game in our league championship (tournament). We responded to the adversity and rallied as a team,” said SIA head coach Mike Bowler.

The squad responded when they closed out the half with three straight goals and started the second half on a 6-1 run to post a 12-6 victory to advance to the AAIS championship for the second time in school history.

Top-seeded SIA will square off against the defending champion and No. 2 seed Chapin School on Friday at 4:30 p.m. at Randall’s Island (Field No. 10). The Manhattan club eked out a 12-11 title win over Staten Island Academy in last year’s championship game.

“We’ve never won our AAIS postseason tournament so we want to make some history. And that’s our goal and that’s been our goal all season,” said Bowler.

Things could not have started any better for SIA as senior Erin Gibbons scored three of her seven goals in the first 5:05 for a quick 3-1 lead. However, the fourth-seeded Cardinals came storming back registering the next three goals in a 6:36 span for a 4-3 advantage.

Molly Maugeri (two goals) tied the game less than five minutes later and Gibbons and Emily D’Arco closed with scores for a 6-4 halftime lead.

Gibbons and Sam Avis extended the lead with second-half goals before Sacred Heart ended the run with a score.

“We switched up the draw. We put Alice Harrison on the draw and she did a phenomenal job controlling possession in the second half. That was the big shift for us,” said Bowler. “And we locked up their best player and I think both those things changed the second half.”

Deanna Lambiasi retaliated just 16 seconds later and helped jumpstart a run of four straight goals to help lock down the victory.

“We talked about a couple of different points especially after their timeout. We said these were momentum timeouts and whoever gets that next goal grabs that momentum,” said Bowler. “We stressed the importance of making sure you respond to every goal and the girls did that and I’m really proud of them.”